The present disclosure generally relates to computer programming. More specifically, the disclosure relates to integrating complex data structures into collaboration environments.
Unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Enterprise collaboration software tools which provide computer based working environments where members can interact and share information are becoming increasingly used. (Such tools are also sometimes referred to as enterprise social software, among other things.) In such collaboration environments, group members can often share documents, see actions taken by other members of the group relating to the group's purpose, interact with one another, vote on issues, keep track of historical data regarding a project, etc. Such collaboration tools seek to facilitate the communication of ideas, and optimize the members' ability to work together to solve problems.
Frequently, it can be useful to include a complex data structure retrieved from another system in a collaboration environment. One example of such complex data structures are business objects generated by a Customer Relations Management (CRM) system. Computerized CRM systems generally include technology that can organize and maintain information about sales, marketing, and customer service, for example. CRM systems provide powerful capabilities in terms of storing large amounts of data, and performing discrete, predetermined tasks with respect to such data. However, they generally do not provide many features for facilitating interactions between different employees working together to solve a problem, for example.
Traditionally, where integration of a collaboration system with other systems has been attempted, it has taken the form of either a “siloed” or “side by side” approach, where either data (e.g., business objects or documents) need to be manually brought in, on an object by object basis, into the collaboration environment or where the collaboration environment is attached to the other system. In a silo approach, a collaboration system and an external system can send and receive data from one another but may be otherwise impermeable to each other. In a side by side approach, more direct access is provided between the systems, but the interactions may be limited in scope and sophistication.
It would be advantageous to provide improved mechanisms for integrating complex data structures into collaboration environments.